Each week, DartmouthSports.com will spotlight two
outstanding student-athletes - one male, one female - as Dartmouth's Athletes
of the Week. Student-athletes may be chosen based upon their efforts both on
and off the field of competition.

Clutch performances on the ice helped
the Big Green skaters snap skids, led by the play of Jenna Cunningham (Medicine
Hat, Alta.) and James Mello (Rehoboth, Mass.), Dartmouth Athletes of the Week .
Cunningham scored a career-high four goals in a blowout of Union for women's
hockey's first win in eight games while Mello got the nod in goal this weekend,
earning a big 3-1 win over Union.
Dartmouth Female Athlete of the Week: Jenna Cunningham (Medicine Hat, Alta.), Women's Hockey, Forward,SeniorSenior co-captain Jenna Cunningham (Medicine Hat, Alta.) led
the way for the Big Green against Union with a career-high four goals in an 8-1
win over the Dutchwomen. Dartmouth got its first win in 2010 and snapped a
five-game skid, which featured three losses by just one goal. Cunningham is
third on the team in points with 21. She is second in goals with 14 and leads
the team with four goals on the man advantage. Cunningham also keeps climbing
the all-time points list and has 115 points for 22nd all-time in Dartmouth
history and is one of 18 skaters to reach 50 goals and 50 assists in a career.

The team has been on
a rough stretch lately, what was the team's attitude after you dropped the
losing streak?The team was on such a high after winning against Union on Saturday,
especially because we have been in a lot of the games that we lost and ended up
just coming up short. So we were pretty excited about the win.

When do you know that
it's your night and the possibility of scoring not just a hat trick, but four
goals?I don't think I really knew that I was going to score a hat trick or four
goals. Some nights the puck just seems to find your stick and it just so happened
that, that night happened to be when we played Union.

The team is in the
middle of eight straight home games. In a couple of weeks, will it take some
adjusting to go back on the road?I think preparation for road games are always a little bit different, but
this late in the season I don't think that there will be a lot of adjustment
needed.

Going into this
week's big games against Boston College and Harvard, how do you carry the
success of Saturday into these two tough contests?I think we really focus on what things we did right against Union and even
RPI for that matter and continue to build off of them. One of the biggest
things we will take into the contests this week is confidence. We saw that we
are capable of scoring goals and taking a lead and keeping it. I think that is
going to be important for us to remember this week when we go ahead and play BC
and Harvard.

Dartmouth Male Athlete
of the Week:James Mello (Rehoboth, Mass.), Men's Hockey, Goaltender, SophomoreJames Mello (Rehoboth, Mass.) earned his first collegiate win with a
career-high 39 saves on Jan. 23 over league-leading #13 Union. Mello
backstopped the Big Green to its fifth win of the season as Dartmouth is looking
get things going during the second half of its season. Mello has appeared in
five total games this year and leads the squad with a 1.74 goals against
average and a .942 save percentage.

Now that you've had
some time to think about, how does it feel to get your first collegiate win?I couldn't be more excited about it. It was my first collegiate win so it
will always be one to remember. Beating the first place team was just icing on
the cake. Of course I still wish I could have stopped the one that got by me.

We've started the
second half of the season. How does it feel that your play in net may have
helped jump-start something for the year?It's a great feeling to be able to get in and contribute to the team. It
seems like we found another gear this past weekend that we realized we could
play more consistently. We still have a lot of league games remaining on the
schedule. It will be exciting to see what noise we can make this second half.

You played behind
Jody O'Neill last season and now this season you've emerged on your own. Do you
feel pressure on you or do you just get out there and play and let it all work
itself out?Goalie can be one of the most stressful and pressured positions I can think
of in sports. It is similar to a pitcher in baseball who has the ability to
make or break a game. Pressure is good to put on yourself in a healthy
quantity, I feel it brings the best out of people. Too much pressure can make
you afraid to just play the game. I try to put most of it aside, just play and
let it work itself out.

How hard has it been
to keep your head up and fight through this season?This year hasn't gone quite the way we had planned but that's just the way
it goes sometimes. There have been plenty of games where the puck just didn't
bounce our way and it always seemed to hurt us. We are a great team that has
yet to fully tap into our potential on a consistent basis. We have showed signs
of it all year just not as consistently as we would like. With the group of
guys we have it's easy to remain positive and expect more of ourselves.